It’s been a big year for the Hellboy Universe: Frankenstein Underground had its debut, Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. impressed as it wrapped up 1952 and headed into 1953, Abe Sapien had some big reveals, while B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth more than live up to its name with one of the Ogdru Jahad making its way to Earth, and finally, Hellboy in Hell had one of the best Hellboy stories ever. So I thought it’d be a good idea to take a moment and look back at it all. Oh, and Mike Mignola decided to join me and share his insight.
It’s a long interview, so I’ve split it into three parts running over three days. Today we’re discussing Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1952 and Frankenstein Underground, the rest of 2015 follows tomorrow, then 2016 on Wednesday 30th.
Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.: 1952 #2 was the first Hellboy Universe title to come out in 2015, so I suppose it’s a good place to start. When you started work on 1952, what did you hope to achieve in this arc?
Mike Mignola: Well, I had a vague idea for this story a long time ago. Basically, my big idea was at some point Hellboy went to South America and fought Nazis. I just figured it was the most typical, old-school Hellboy kind of thing. And really what was always in my head was at the end there’d be this photo of Hellboy standing over defeated Nazis, which would grant him (in my amazingly simplistic way) honorary human status. “The guy went to South America, he beat up Nazis, let’s rubber stamp his papers so he becomes a human being.”
And when I put that series together, when it it became a reality, I thought, “I want something that’s so, in a way, typical, so old-school, classic Hellboy. We’ll put in that Frankenstein stuff, we’ll put in the Nazis stuff…” I wanted something that was so much a return to what Hellboy used to be, or at least what everybody always thought Hellboy was. I even had the Frankenstein-type monkeys in there. I was just like, let’s put all that stuff in there that I’d really gotten so far away from, but we’ll go as classic old-school as possible.
Yes, the mapinguaris creatures kind of feel like the predecessors to Herman von Klempt’s Kriegaffen.
MM: Yeah, that was the idea. It’s always tricky when you do this stuff when you go, “OK, we have to go backwards so we can’t do this and can’t do this and can’t do this… what can we do?” And at this point there are too many books for me to sit down every time and read through everything and know exactly what I’ve done and what I haven’t done. That’s your job really. I mean, thank god. You usually have some article somewhere where I can read through it and go, “Oh, OK, we haven’t done this” or “Well, we can’t do this because Mark found that we’d already done that.” So you’re a very good resource for that kind of thing.
Yeah, I get emails asking questions about dates of certain events and things like that on occasion.
MM: You know, it’s like, maybe most people don’t get what we’re doing, but at least one guy out there gets enough of it so that we can say, “OK, it’s possible for readers to get it.” I don’t want to spoon-feed everything to the reader, but if you’re able to figure it out, then it’s technically possible for other humans to figure it out.
Yes, you keep me feeling like maybe I am actually doing something good that makes a certain kind of sense.
Thanks. I just enjoy the way you set things up so far in advance. I mean, we’ve just met Herman von Klempt in 1952, and you’re sort of laying the groundwork for his return in 1959. I mean, it was one of the four-page teasers you did to promote Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, the one where he saves a woman that was being experimented on.
Continued belowMM: Yeah, I think it’ll be fun. And again, this will be up to Chris [Roberson] since he’s taking on the bulk of this writing now. It’ll be fun to do a story where we end with that little von Klempt thing. I don’t know if it’ll be possible to do it. I don’t know if it’d be possible to do a story and not [have the reader know] where it’s going, because that little four pager was really just the punch line. It was the end of the story. So it might actually be fun to do one where the readers, the casual readers, don’t recognize where we’re going.
You, of course, as soon as we have Hellboy go back to South America, you’ll go, “Ah! It’s ’59 and he’s in South America!”
Actually, as soon as you mentioned South America in 1952, I was like, “Oh, he’s going to return to the apes and statues from Witchfinder: Beware the Ape and Lobster Johnson: Tony Masso’s Finest Hour!”
MM: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s another one that’s been fun, is that particular statue, that idol of some Ogdru Hem kind of thing… I think the first time I did that was in Lobster Johnson. So we’re introducing something in Lobster Johnson, going back, putting it in Witchfinder, and then also putting it here. I like any of that stuff that you can do that creates a certain thread—especially if it’s done out of order—a certain thread that runs through the various books.
I hope we haven’t seen the last of those statues.
MM: Me too.
Speaking of ongoing threads, in this story Professor Bruttenholm is still haunted by Varvara. She’s been hanging around ever since B.P.R.D.: 1946. if I’m right in my thinking, that’ll go on until Iosif is found and taken to the Special Sciences Service in Russia in 1984.
MM: Yeah, I just think at some point I don’t think she contacts Bruttenholm anymore. And again, it might change, but my feeling is that the bit with the photo at the end of 1952 was almost her saying goodbye. Again, it might change. Not that she won’t be in the book somewhere, because she is—and again I don’t think even John [Arcudi] knows what year she gets stuck in that jar.
It was very loosely defined as the Cold War.
MM: Yeah. That’s, again, kind of a vague thing, and we do want to do some Cold War stuff going into the ’50s and ’60s. I suspect we will see her again. She’s a great character, and it’ll be really fun to fill in some of her backstory and see what goes on with Russia, but I don’t want her to have this ongoing relationship with Bruttenholm. I really think there’s a parting ways, and I really looked at the end of 1952 as her waving goodbye. Like she’s told [Dr. Malcolm Frost] “He’s my favorite, I look out for him, don’t mess with him” and then she waves goodbye to Bruttenholm.
So I’d like to get her out of there. I think that her-talking-to-Bruttenholm gag was really good for a while, but I just don’t know how you could keep it up.
I’ll be interested to see how she evolves then.
Earlier this year you introduced Frankenstein Underground, and you kind of gave a sense of what Frankenstein means in the Hellboy Universe in 1952 by having the characters dropping casual references to Frankenstein all over the place. So I’m curious, was Mary Shelley’s novel in the Hellboy Universe considered historical fiction when it was written?
MM: Huh. I never really thought about that. I suspect if I really had to go back and deal with that, yeah, it would have been a slightly fictionalized account of something that really happened.
I thought that might be the case. It gives you license to be a little loose with events, while still being true to their essence.
MM: Right. Also, the dialogue I took from the novel, which is in one or two panels, I did alter it a little. Not much, but I think just to get the rhythm to read right. I think I changed a couple of words here or there.
Continued belowI was really stunned when I Frankenstein Underground how connected it was to practically everything. I mean, there was even a reference to Lobster Johnson.
MM: Was there? All right.
Yeah, there’s a poster on the wall in the background of the luchador Lobster Johnson.
MM: See this is why I don’t drive or I’m not able to remember my own phone number, because I do keep track of that stuff. Maybe not as well as you do… or maybe even better. I’m constantly trying to keep track of those threads and how to get this entire world to reference other bits of itself.
I think Frankenstein Underground pulled that off better than practically anything else. It was fantastic.
MM: To me it’s kind of what Marvel comics used to be able to do. I remember as a kid reading… I was very into The Avengers and there was an Avengers storyline where they met the characters from the Old West, and I just remember loving the idea that all these different books clearly did take place in the same world and referenced each other.
And I don’t think anybody does that anymore, or at least not to the extent that we’re doing it. So, in a way, the fact that Marvel and DC have collapsed under their own weight makes it… I’m the one guy left trying to do that.
And I’m glad you haven’t rebooted.
MM: That was the trick. I mean, 1952 in a way almost feels like a reboot, but it didn’t have to be a reboot, because fortunately there were these big holes left in [Hellboy]’s story. So you really could almost start from day one, and yet I don’t have to change anything. That’s one of the things I’m still pretty proud of: at no point in the twenty-some odd years I’ve been doing this have I felt like I worked myself into a corner that I couldn’t get out of or that I wanted to get out of. So I’m still really happy with the events, the way that we set them up.
Yeah, you’ve built a rich history there. Like all the Hyperborean stuff. Actually, there’s a bit in Frankenstein Underground with Thoth giving seven women the power of Vril and sending them off into the world. One of these women turns out to be inside the city of Shambhala, sealed inside the statue of the Black Goddess. So it’s possible the others are still out in the world in other Hyperborean cities.
And that makes me really, really curious about Liz’s origins, because she is so unique in this world, and we know literally nothing about where how power came from.
MM: Yeah… I don’t want to tell you that you’re never going to get that story… but, at least as far as I know, you’re never going to get that story. My feeling is that this stuff, this Hyperborean stuff, these people that were able to channel that Vril energy—and I can talk this stuff with you because you and Scott Allie are the only guys who even care about this stuff—but since we set up the fact that the survivors of Hyperborea trained this certain group of humans to be able to channel that Vril energy, I just figure some of that Vril energy has passed down just through certain bloodlines.
So I don’t think there’s going to be any kind of a, “Oh, we’re going to find out that she’s adopted and she’s really this or really that!” I just think it’s one of those genetic things that pops up at some point.
Which does, actually, bring up this whole other gigantic thing—which actually isn’t a bad idea, I never even thought about it—but wouldn’t there be other human beings that would have this Vril thing somewhere in them that would manifest in one way or another… which could explain any number of super-powered beings if we populated our world with those guys.
That was what struck me about Liz, is that she is very unique. I mean, when we meet her in Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, she’s a pyrokinetic, and readers just assumed this was normal for this world. We’re used to superhero books populated with super-powered characters. That’s just what comics do. But over time, readers begin to realize that there’s no one else like her.
Continued belowMM: Well, that’s why I never wanted to populate the B.P.R.D., or really even the world, with a lot of super-powered characters. Part of it is I think most super-powered characters… Well, I’m fine with superhero comics, I loved superhero comics once upon a time, but this just didn’t feel like a world that would be populated with superheroes. So the closest things I think we’ve got to superheroes are things like—other than Hellboy, and Abe, and, I guess, Liz—would be things like Lobster Johnson.
Lobster Johnson stands in for all the pulp characters and, really, old superheroes, but I didn’t want a whole world where the B.P.R.D. is entirely populated with guys who have special abilities. I wanted to keep it a little bit more normal human or stuff that occurs within recorded supernatural phenomena, things like psychics and stuff like that. I remember one of the first B.P.R.D. stories—it was in those first four issues we did, they were kind of try-outs for different writers and artists—somebody had this two-headed guy, the writer had asked for a two-headed character in the B.P.R.D., and I said “Absolutely not. It’s just that you’ve completely not understood what this world is.”
I like the emphasis on regular people.
MM: Yeah, and it certainly played to John’s strengths, ’cause it’s probably why, or one of the reasons, that I recognized John was just such a perfect fit for it, because I knew his feelings about superheroes, I knew his strengths. So, yeah, to even take characters that have certain odd powers and make them as human as he did, it was really what that book needed.
Before we move on, there was one more thing I wanted to ask about Frankenstein Underground. The golden bowl from the Hyperborean crypt in this story also happens to show up in Abe Sapien: The Drowning, where it was used to transport a Hyperborean spirit from one body to the next, effectively making that Hyperborean immortal. Another of these golden bowls showed up in Hellboy: The Island. In that story the golden bowl was used to hold the right hand of the Watcher Anum.
So it seems that the nature of this bowl is to carry spirits or souls. So my question is, is there a spark of Anum’s soul in the Right Hand of Doom (similar to that fragment of Rasputin’s soul that the Baba Yaga kept in an acorn around her neck for a while)?
MM: It’s a good point. Honestly, I haven’t looked it up yet. I completely forgot about using that thing in The Drowning. I knew it was in The Island. The one in The Island would be bigger, because it would have to contain that hand. When it came to doing that thing in the crypt, I was looking around for something that would be basically a stand-in for a cross, you know? Some sort of holy object [for the] Hyperboreans. The idea was just, what would be a sacred object to them? [It] would be that bowl that contained the hand, so this would be a replica of some kind.
And, yeah, it would make sense that in some way it’s been blessed by Hyperborean priests or something, but I don’t think it’s got like a finger or something in it. That’s kind of a cute idea that they would take the hand apart and… yeah.
But I think it’s like a cross would be. It’s not a piece of the true cross, it’s just a symbolic representation of that thing.
Check in tomorrow for part 2!
